Climate Change and Health
Prepare yourself for effective engagement with climate change issues in your professional life through this intensive three-day Climate Change and Health Boot Camp.
June 4-6, 2025
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Course Description
The Climate Change and Health Boot Camp is a three-day intensive course that will prepare clinicians, scientists, and other members of the research, health, and public health communities for informed, effective engagement with climate change issues in their professional lives.
Identify causes of climate change and healthcare's role: Understand the origins of climate change and healthcare's impact on its progression.
- Analyze mechanisms linking climate change to health: Explore evidence-based connections between climate change and health outcomes.
- Evaluate implications for health equity: Examine how climate change affects health disparities and equity considerations.
- Implement climate-informed actions in professional practice: Develop skills to access climate projections, plan for health impacts, and engage stakeholders effectively in climate and health issues.
Course Prerequisites
Professionals from any institution and from all career stages are welcome to attend, and we particularly encourage trainees and early-stage investigators to participate. There are two requirements to attend this training:
- Participants are expected to attend all sessions and come prepared to participate in group discussions, undertake brief in-class exercises, and share their experience/expertise with other learners.
- Participants will be expected to have a working laptop or tablet with video and audio capabilities.
What You Will Learn
Climate change is having substantial impacts on the health - effects that are expected to become more extreme in coming decades. This training will give participants knowledge and skills that will help them improve clinical care and public health practice, prepare for climate change impacts, and integrate climate change information into long-term research or management decision-making.
This three-day intensive boot camp combines content on the mechanisms and health impacts of climate change with practical approaches to mitigation and adaptation that participants can apply to their professional work. Led by physicians and public health experts with specialized training in Climate Change and Health, this workshop will integrate content-oriented lectures, skills-oriented class exercises, and group discussion of broader themes, challenges, and opportunities. Upon completion of the course, participants are expected to have an understanding of key topics in climate change and health and a personal action plan for engagement with these issues in their professional work.
By the end of the workshop, participants will be familiar with the following topics:
- Causes of climate change and the contribution of the health system to climate change.
- Current, evidence-based mechanisms connecting climate change to health impacts.
- Implications of climate change for health equity.
- How to access climate projections, information on projected health impacts, and information to support long-term planning and research.
- Clinical actions to consider in climate-affected patients.
- Principals of healthcare system and public health resilience planning in the context of climate change.
- Principals of climate and health communication with a variety of stakeholders.
- Case studies on successful engagement with climate and health issues by individuals, institutions, and communities.
Instructors
Cecilia Sorensen, MD is the Director of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Columbia Irving Medical Center and Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. As a physician-investigator at the nexus of climate change and human health, translating research into policy, clinical action, and education to build resilience in vulnerable communities is the focus of her research. Her recent work has spanned domestic as well as international emergent health issues related to climate change, including, extreme heat, degraded air quality, extreme weather events, emerging infectious diseases, women’s health, and worker health. Dr. Sorensen is a member of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change and serves on the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative for Decarbonization of the U.S. Health Sector. She is the co-editor of the textbook Climate Change and Human Health: From Science to Practice.
Stefan Wheat, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine. With the Center for Health and the Global Environment (CHanGE) at the University of Washington, Dr. Wheat works to understand the scope of the health threats posed by climate change, promote healthcare system adaptation and emergency preparedness, and inform policies to keep people safe in a rapidly changing world. He completed a fellowship in Climate & Health Science Policy at the University of Colorado where he worked as a Physician-Fellow at the Department of Health and Human Services in their Office of Climate Change and Health Equity (OCCHE) and as an Associate Research Scientist at Columbia University’s Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education. His work has included founding ClimateRx, a tool designed to help health professionals to connect with patients and colleagues on how we can respond to the health risks of climate change, and promoting digital health solutions to promote climate change health system resilience and sustainability.